I do the same; whilst I have not held a season ticket in over 10 years I frequently travel using single/returns and will always claim.Yes I (almost) always claim Delay Repay, as matter of principle. (The 'almost' is if I forget or lose the ticket or am exceptionally busy - but I reckon I claim for 80-90% of my delays.)
I’m of the opinion that almost every delay is within the control of the railway, whether that’s a person under train or incidents like the fire mentioned above. It’s up to the railway to have decent incident managers to control the spread of incidents, it’s up to them to form good relationships with emergency services to get incidents resolved quicker, and it’s up to them to be confident and willing to challenge decisions.
Decisions are also made in terms of having adequate stock, spare traincrew and a good relationship with their traincrew to ensure that outside of the incident area and post incident, they can run a decent service. I think this is one area that the railway does quite well on actually.
And before anyone says (not that it’s relevant), yes I do, and have previously done, jobs that involve all of those things above.